Will Tim Burton Have ‘Peculiar Children?’

The director of Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows is in talks to adapt a new, spooky novel.

Whatever is Hollywood going to do without Tim Burton? Oh don't worry, he's fine, but one of these days he's going to retire or go mysteriously missing and the film industry will have nobody to direct their spooky, Hot Topic-y tales of gothic wonder, and then what? Stop making them altogether? Give Brad Silberling another shot? Who knows?

We don't have to worry about that at the moment, of course. Burton's making movies like a madman lately, with the DarkShadows adaptation and his stop-motion remake of Frankenweenie both looming on the horizon. It looks now like he's set to add another eerie adaptation to that list: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, the first novel by Ransom Riggs, whose previous efforts included The Sherlock Holmes Handbook and Mental Floss: Scatterbrained.

Deadline reports that Tim Burton is in early talks to adapt the novel, about a sixteen-year-old boy named Jacob who travels to a mysterious island and finds the eponymous school. His late grandfather used to tell him stories about the strange children who used to be housed there, who had paranormal abilities and may – somehow – still be alive. Sounds like a Tim Burton movie all right.

Some people seem to be tiring of Burton's shtick, but not us. It's only frustrating when he shoehorns it into material that doesn't fit his mannerisms or tries to hide them behind mainstream conventionality, as in Alice in Wonderland. He's still a striking talent, and we look forward to everything he does. It will be nice to see him tackle a semi-original story, that's for sure.

CraveOnline will be back with more Tim Burton news after we finish painting vertical black and white stripes on everything we own.